


we were built to fall apart

by magicandlight



Series: The States [10]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Civil War era, Flashbacks?, Gen, Hamilton Lyrics, I'm sorry this is sad, Twins, Wes is like Angelica Schuyler in the way that they would both do anything for their sisters, West Virginia Centric, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 09:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: The other Virginia is already there by the time by the time he is formed enough to be aware.





	we were built to fall apart

 

_I love my sister more than anything in this life; I will choose her happiness over mine every time  
 _-The Reynolds Pamphlet, Hamilton__

_c. 1861 (present)_  
The pain jerks him out of his sleep and he screams as every nerve and cell  _aches_.

When it finally dulls out enough for Wes to think, Alfred is there, an arm wrapped gingerly around Wes's shoulders.

Lizzy isn't there at all.

Her absence hits him like a bucket of cold water.

Wes reaches for her, for the bond that tied them together as one Virginia, a miniature of the union-bond, and feels nothing but tatters.

For the first time in his life, Wes reaches for his sister and finds nothing.

Tears spill down his face, and Alfred holds him and he doesn't get it, not really, not this. This is having part of your soul amputated.

Wes swallows harshly. "She's gone, isn't she."

It isn't a question.

 _c. 1861 (present)_  
Wes spends the first month curled up in bed with his and Liz's soft-knit baby blankets, the first thing anybody had ever given them. Sometimes Sera will come sit with him and tell him about all the things that are happening, about the new territories and the war efforts.

Most of the time, he's left to himself and the memories that force their way to the surface when he sleeps.

 _c. 1607 (past)_  
The other Virginia is already there by the time by the time he is formed enough to be aware.

Her skin is lighter than his, and her hair falls down her back in curls like golden wheat where his is darker.

She reaches out to tangle her fingers with his.  
\------------  
The world is just them, stretched across the continent like cats in sunlight.

If he reaches, he can feel Roanoke and the sadness imprinted into the earth, can feel mountains and rivers and sometimes even something that seems tropical, if he tries hard enough.

His sister is tied more closely to the seashores and the tidal plains, but she admits that she can feel the mountains too.

They meet a man one day, and his sister frowns in confusion when a foreign language spills from his mouth smoothly.

The man's name is Powhatan, they both know.

Virginia greets him back in the same tongue with the same fluidity.

His sister stumbles over her words with a tongue made for English. 

 _c. 1739 (past)_  
They are not identical.

Elizabeth has a constellation of freckles dotting over her cheeks, with a few scattered over the rest of her, and skin that is the perfect in-between of fair and tan. Her hair is the exact color of golden wheat, and falls in soft waves. Her eyes are a brilliant blue-green (but more green than blue).

Wesley is covered in freckles from head to toe. His skin is a tan color that can be passed off as too much sun, but more than one human has narrowed their eyes and wondered about his parentage. His hair is the color of the cream toffees Alfred had once bought and an untamable mess to boot. His eyes are bluer than Liz's, but they also have a tendency to turn a color that's like a stormcloud.

Elizabeth was always the prettier one, the one that could get away with a stolen piece of bread, the one that people sometimes took pity on.

Alfred treats them like they're equal, and Wesley loves him for it.

 _c. 1861 (present)_  
It's a little more than a week after Liz has left that Wes punches Scott in the face.

Alfred gives him a disappointed look, and Wes doesn't care.

Scott had been mooning around like he was the only one who missed Liz, like it was some huge betrayal and not something out of her hands that she had seceded, and it had been grating on Wes's nerves.

The violin, though, had been the final straw.

Jefferson had taught Liz to play on that violin. The last time she had spoken to Jefferson, she had played him Vivaldi on that violin. She'd been devasted when Martha sold it. Liz loved her violin in a way that Wes had never loved his own.

Wesley doesn't care that Scott had gotten Prussia to track it down and London and paid some outrageous price to purchase and polish and tune it before he had given it to Liz.

That doesn't give him the right to just hand it over to Kendall.

Wes doesn't regret it for a moment, not with Liz's violin gleaming in its case on his bed. 

 _c. 1861 (present)_  
Wes has dreams where Liz fades, turns back into saltwater and red clay and dark earth.

They're more frequent now that she's seceded, now that she's abandoned the safety net of statehood. Somehow, he'd always figured that there would be a choice somehow, and so Wes had made his bed a long time ago, when he decided that this world will not take his sister.

This war is the first time he ever allows himself to think that he may not have a choice on who fades.

None of the others fear this so much, but Wes has been afraid of Liz fading since he was old enough to realize there shouldn't be two of them.

 _c. 1740 (past)_  
It's simpler to say that Liz is the coast and he is the mountains and they meet in the middle.

It's harder to say that Wes feels their people as much as Liz does, that their hearts beat in sync because there is one capital, that they balance precariously on the edge of health because they are too much.

There is not enough Virginia for two, not after the world is cut into other colonies, so they both suffer.

There are stories of women expecting one baby and getting two instead, not knowing until they're holding their first baby and the midwife says, oh look, there's another. (Well, Wes imagines there would be more screaming and cursing involved.)

Wes wonders if the land is the same way. Perhaps that explains why there are two Virginias. Liz is the expected and planned baby, and Wes is the surprise that followed her.

Except in this analogy, the cradle is a colony and there is only place for one of them.

They used to make a game of it, trying to figure out where one begins and the other ends. All they ever did decide was that they were tangled together. They could never determine how much of their heart was in the other's hands.

Wes does not know why he exists, only that he does.

He knows that twins do not survive into adulthood together often. There isn't enough to go around sometimes.

He knows that personifications can fade.

If one of them has to fade, then West decides that it's going to be him. Liz is smarter and more talented. She's stronger and better. She came first. She is the baby who was wanted. Wes is the cuckoo in the nest. The surprise baby.

Liz was here first, and it's only fair that she gets to stay. Finders keepers.

If only one of them gets to survive, then he'll always choose her. 

 _c. 1780 (past)_  
When Wes gets shot at that battle, he doesn't die immediately.

He thinks that this isn't such a bad way to go. There are worse ways to fade, he guesses. Brooke had come back, but she had her own state. Wes did not.

Wes would have liked to see them win the war, to tell Liz goodbye, to scratch behind Lavender's ears one more time, but he supposes it can't be helped.  
\------------  
He comes back, and is blinded with the absurd panic that Liz has faded while he was gone.

_WhyWhyWhyWhereisLizWHEREISHISSISTER_

Vaguely, Wes registers he's yelling. He doesn't hear Alfred shout, he doesn't hear the door slam open, but he does feel the body that crashes into his.

Wes would know his sister, even if he was blind, even if he was deaf, even if he lost all of his senses, even in death.

They know each other down to the color of blood and the cadence of heartbeats and the scars etched into their skin, because they are the two halves to make a whole.

 _c. 1861 (present)_  
Lincoln calls him Virginia and Wes flinches.

(He doesn't want to be Virginia, not all alone. Liz is annoying and sort of a control freak but she's his sister, his twin.)  
\------------  
The first letters arrive, addressed to Scott and Sera and Wes in Liz's neat cursive, and Wes grabs his and runs upstairs.

She writes about Jackson, how he knew her name and that she had a twin without her telling him. About her and Daniel becoming state leaders.

They don't meet each on battlefields, and Wes is glad, but that means the only contact they have are the letters.

He breathes a little easier every time he gets one of her letters, proof that for now, Liz is still there somewhere.

 _c. 1614 (past)_  
The other Virginia loves the ocean, loves the crash of the waves and salt in the air.

She forgets her own limits sometimes, forgets that she isn't infallible, that she isn't a fish and she breathes air.

Virginia pulls her from the water when she goes too far.

The other Virginia, who for all rights is older and should be smarter, forgets she can't swim too often.

 _c. 1616 (past)_  
The facts are simple.

If Virginia doesn't learn how to swim, one day she will drown.

He does not know how to swim.

So he begs Powhatan to teach her, tosses any pride he might have had to the ground, and Powhatan looks at him and says  _you care for your sister very much_  and Virginia just nods.

 _c. 1862 (present)_  
Alfred nearly has a breakdown at the sight of the dusty stars in the library, so Del and Scott drag the stars down to DC and stuff them in one of Al's office cabinets.

He writes to Liz about it.

Liz doesn't respond for a while.

 _c. 1790 (past)_  
He makes sure Liz grabs the star first, that there's a moment where it is just her hands on it.

She's okay with the sharing their metal-star, but Liz frowns at the officials until they hand over the extra ceramic-star (in case one of the others broke).

Lizzy paints her star a pretty, pale pink, traced through with little floral designs, and signs her name in black.

Wes paints his own with the outline of one of his mountains, all vibrant green and blue sky. He signs his name in black ink he borrowed from Liz, and hopes for the millionth time that neither of them will have to fade.

 _c. 1800 (past)_  
Washington hands out the boxes with a smile.

They're pretty, wrapped in paper and ribbons.

Washington only has thirteen boxes. His smile is apologetic when he sets it between them.

"It's for the both of you."

The stripe is a pure, shining white in Liz's hands,  _Virginia_  embroidered in rich red.

 _c. 1863 (present)_  
Lincoln offers him a star, offers statehood.

Wes accepts because this could fix everything. Liz will be Virginia all by herself, and he'll be his own state.

Neither of them will have to fade.   
\------------  
His statehood ceremony is a somber affair, but all of them have been lately.

Wes misses the days when the ceremonies were excuses to throw parties.

Addison comes, and he had almost forgotten that she'd gotten her star after the secessions had started. Monty comes too, and stays long after everyone else has left.

They don't talk, but they don't need to. They were the only ones who weren't true colonies.

Foster had been too young to question his existence, the youngest of all of them, and Sam had never let him falter anyway. Even then, his whole existence could be explained by how far he was from Sam, how he was touched by the French before the English even thought about their northern tip.

Monty and Wes had spent the days before heir statehoods sure that one day they would just... fade.

Hell, Wes had been so entirely sure that it was him or Liz, one or the other, not both.  
\------------  
He comes home and he downs two bottles of rum.

Wes goes and sits on Liz's bed, throwing the star that fully separates them carelessly onto the mattress, thinks about the signet ring with the seal of Virginia on his dresser that he'd taken off before the ceremony, about how he'll never put it back on.

Scott, of course, interrupts his pity party.

Wes raises the bottle. "To statehood." He snorts and then chugs a fourth of the bottle.

Scott sits beside him. "I miss her too."

Wes raises an eyebrow. "Why? You've only been avoiding her for what, a decade now? Sending her letters back as some big screw you?"

Because, yeah, he had noticed that. He couldn't bring himself to ask Liz about it in his own letters.

"You couldn't understand." Scott says, like Liz isn't his twin, like they haven't shared everything, like he wouldn't die for her without hesitation.

Scott may be _in_  love with her, but Wes loves his sister more than anything else.

Wes laughs, bitter and ugly and hurt. "I couldn't understand. You know, every time you do something, I had to pick up the pieces and put them back together. You ignore her for months on end after the battle of Long Island, and yeah, I know exactly what you and Gin did, and I have to keep her from having a nervous breakdown. You avoid her for an entire decade and she throws herself into becoming a perfect southern belle and I had to live with it. Either stop running away and tell her you like her or stop messing with her."

"I don't like her like that."

Wes shot him a look. "Right." He shook his head, swallowed the rest of the bottle, and left Scott sitting there.  
\------------  
He moves his ceramic star that night, from beside Liz's to after Addison's.

Wes isn't surprised when Sera comes to him later.

Sera is brilliant and mature and hardworking, but she's still a child and Liz helped raise her and everyone else seems to have forgotten that.

Sera leans against him the way she had when she was about a foot shorter and three years younger, and Wes wraps his arm around her shoulders.

They both miss her.

 _c. 1863 (present)_  
Everyone knows about Kendall and Tim, because they've been together since before their statehoods and once Alfred found out, they hadn't bothered to hide it.

It's an open secret that sometimes when Kendall disappears, it's because he's with Tim, stealing time right out of the jaws of this god-awful war.

Kendall had never quite thought of Liz as a sister the way Sera did, but his land has been  _Virginia_  before it became _Kentucky_ , and that sort of thing meant something.

It's an offhand comment, something about tea and how Liz was the only southerner who still drank hot tea and Scott snaps at him.

Kendall isn't his brother the way Liz isn't Kendall's sister, but he remembers the days when Kendall toddled after the two of them and plucked at their violins and called them both Virginia and got mad when the right one didn't respond.

Scott snaps at Kendall and Wes copies a move from Liz's southern belle book and gives him a look like he's gone and kicked a puppy. "Get the fuck off your high horse and stop acting like you have any claim to Elizabeth at all."

Scott looks at him with wide eyes but the sad eyes only ever worked on Liz, so he's got the wrong Virginia for that.

Wes snorts. "Some best friend you are."

 _c. 1792 (past)_  
Abigail and Kendall are formed from pieces carved out of Virginia, and they make Wes a little nervous.

After all, Virginia had less territory now and there were  _still_ two Virginias, still  _Elizabeth-and-Wesley_  and he didn't  _understand_.

He doesn't understand children that well, either. He was pretty sure he'd been less ridiculous when he was little, even with putting the pinecones in Liz's bed and all that. Wes doesn't remember being  _so_ \- so _helpless_  either. He's certain neither he nor Liz was ever that small, or that there was ever a time when they couldn't walk or talk or sort of fend for themselves. 

Abigail likes to clutch at Liz's skirts and stumble along after her, which is sort of cute, and Kendall has an odd fascination with their violins, by which Wes means he plucks at the strings until they break (and therefore stop making noise) and once ate the sheet music for Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 1 in D major. 

 _c. 1864 (present)_  
Jackson makes a habit of hurting states and all Wes can think is that his sister is under the same roof as that  _monster._

 _c. 1739 (past)_  
The man crouches down and offers the other Virginia his hand and he throws himself in front of her without hesitation or question. 

Virginia looks at him, sees the brief flicker of confusion before the man smiles, sticking his hand back in his pocket. 

"Hello," He says. "My name's America."

 _c. 1864 (present)_  
They meet on the battlefield once.

They do not fight each other.

 _c. 1778 (past)_  
They fight side by side, two sides of the same coin. They watch each other's backs better than they watch their own. They sleep beside each other and whisper about stars and stripes and glory.

They fight their way to independence together.

 _c. 1865 (present)_  
Liz's gun thuds to the ground and then her knees do to as she surrenders, the fight gone out of her.

Scott hugs her, and Liz whispers to him before she slips away.

Her knuckles brush against his apologetically as she passes him, and Wes understands the gesture for what it is: Liz is coming home.

 _c. 1865 (present)_  
He clings to his sister like a child and she clings back.

Liz flings her arms around his neck and Wes returns the gesture, and he thinks Liz has missed him as much as he has missed her, because they both make the hug too tight to be anything other than desperate.

"I missed you." She whispers, her voice breaking.

Wes holds his sister tighter. "I missed you, too."

**Author's Note:**

> This is really complicated, but basically, all of British North America below what was then the Dutch's New Netherlands was called Virginia. Wesley exists from the start just like Elizabeth because the land was vastly different between the settlements. Therefore, Elizabeth represented one piece of 'Virginia' and Wes represented another. The 'something that seems tropical' is Bermuda, which was also considered part of Virginia. At this point in time, Wesley is pretty much a personification of the so-called "Virginia Wilderness" whereas Elizabeth is colonial Virginia- Jamestown and the latter settlements. This is why his skin is a touch darker and he speaks the native languages easier.
> 
> No, the Virginias aren't identical. They have similarities, but they're more like fraternal twins than identical. (Fun fact: Identical twins are always the same sex. If your twins are one boy and one girl, then they're automatically fraternal.)
> 
> Wes's hair color: I sort of picture his hair being sort of a dirty-blonde-ish thing, but when I wrote this I looked up shades of blonde, and that's where the word toffee came from. Picture link: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/607423068470202180/ See? Toffee-blonde. That's how I imagine Wes's hair color. (I clarify this because Robin proofread and then looked at me and said "He's got orange hair?")


End file.
